Mac 101: Camera-specific application launching

If you're the proud owner of a multi-camera/single Mac household then you've probably run into the problem of what happens when you plug in a camera not necessarily being what you intended. For instance, my wife used to have an issue where iPhoto would always launch when she plugged in her iPhone. This was because her Canon camera launched iPhoto whenever it was plugged in via USB.

Creig Sherburne has discovered that in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, however, camera/application management woes are tackled via an Apple utility that comes with the system. The latest iteration of Image Capture (version 6.0 at least) includes a preference setting for specifying which application to launch when connecting a camera. There's an even option for having no application launch, which is a nice feature if your Mac is running on scarce resources and some rogue program is taking up memory when trying to open.

Lest you think that by not upgrading to Snow Leopard you're in the lurch (though if you can, you should, it's only 30 bucks) fear not. There is a third-party solution for this issue; Cameras prefpane from Flexibits, which we noted back in July, beautifully (and freely!) solves this problem for Tiger and Leopard users.

Got any other handy, camera-related tips? Let us know in the comments!